Ring employees reportedly had access to customers' recorded videos and live feeds

14/01/2019

Our data-driven age now forces you to weigh the usefulness of a smart mirror against the risk that strangers might be watching you in your bathroom.

It seems that the security problem was widespread within the company, with the report claiming a group of Ukraine-based researchers had access to a folder containing "every video created by every Ring camera around the world", as well as a "corresponding database that linked each specific video file to corresponding specific Ring customers".

According to The Intercept, sources said that Ring's local and overseas employees were given "highly privileged access" to live feeds. But the Intercept said the Amazon-owned company was also allowing some high-level engineers in the U.S.to view customers' video feeds, while others in the Ukraine office could view and download any customer video file. Customers can choose to share some information - such as photos of the hair cut they got last time they visited a salon - but the businesses can't access anything stored in user profiles unless users specifically allow them to.

The Intercept's source revealed that not only were the video recordings were easily accessible, downloading and sharing them would have required no more than a few clicks. Asked by Gizmodo whether this apparently became the case before or after reporters began researching the alleged employee access to livestreams, a spokesperson said: "Ring employees do not and have never had access to customer live streams".

All the while, users had no idea that their camera footage was being watched by Ring employees.

The said operation, however, has been reportedly compromised as employees are heard to have not kept their job and the videos private and even used the technology to even spy at one another and teasing whoever brings home a date. You wouldn't expect executive-level employees to have access to this data though, and the fact that the company's development team can link videos to customers seemingly without oversight is cause for concern. This process has reportedly been going on for years, possibly even to this day.

The home security startup sells doorbells that capture video and audio.

All those clips the Ring devices would save in the cloud.

At CES, Ring announced an internet-connected video doorbell that fits into peepholes for apartment dwellers or college students who can't install one next to their doors.

Ring promotes its gadgets as a way to catch package thieves, a nuisance that Amazon has been looking to remedy.

As with other security cameras, Ring's can be mounted outside the front door or inside the home to give you a peek, through an app, of who's there.

Ring went on to win backing from the likes of billionaire Richard Branson and Amazon's Alexa Fund. The company says it will abide by Europe's stronger privacy rules, which took effect in May, regardless of where a customer lives.

'In order to improve our service, we view and annotate certain Ring videos.

"These recordings are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes", the Ring spokesperson said, adding that it has strict policies for team members and systems in place to restrict and audit access to information.

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